


i won’t go down by myself

by trespresh



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Essentially just an extension of the He’s All And He’s More scene, Extended Scene, Fill in the gaps, He’s All and He’s More, Immortal Husbands, Kind of? Slightly?, M/M, More like Mid-Canon divergence, Post-Canon, Violence, mentions of the rest of the team but they’re not actually in it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:41:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25859863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trespresh/pseuds/trespresh
Summary: Nicky rubs at his sore jaw and, already bemoaning his throbbing headache, is on his knees before any of the armed men can react. He fists his zip-tied hands into the straps of the man’s bulletproof vest and heatbutts him hard between the eyes.Or, the missing scene after The Speech.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 23
Kudos: 474





	i won’t go down by myself

**Author's Note:**

> I made myself wait to watch this movie because I knew, I KNEW I’d swan dive headfirst into this canon relationship dumpster. So, here I am, covered in trash, offering this self-indulgent little thing that was basically an excuse for me to watch that scene over and over. For research of course. 
> 
> Title is from My Chemical Romance’s ‘You Know What They Do To Guys Like Us In Prison’. lol.

_“Nicolo.”_

Nicky has died a million ways.

“ _Nicolo, wake up.”_

And has opened his eyes again a million times. He doesn’t always wake to the sound of his heart’s voice, but when he does, it is a balm for the phantom pain of death. 

His throat is sore when he assures Joe, his head heavy when he hauls himself up. The jostling of the armored van only adds to his headache.

_“They used gas_ ,” Joe says in Italian, and yes, that makes sense. 

It’s been a few decades since they’ve died by carbon monoxide, and that one time had been an accident; they’d gone to sleep in the Tango safehouse in Latvia, and hadn’t woken up. Until they had, of course.

That had been painless though. The ache of this last death lingers, sour and chemical on the back of his tongue. Cyanide poisoning, if Nicky had to guess. That’s a new one. Booker told them all about the chemical’s efficiency; he should know, having served under Napoleon’s command.

Mankind’s use of biological weaponry never ceases to annoy.

One of the guards tries to goad Joe, embarrass him, maybe, with the word _boyfriend_ , and Nicky closes his eyes to avoid rolling them. The man really went for the low-hanging fruit. Predictable.

And then Joe’s giving The Speech, as Andy and Booker have come to call it. This isn’t the first time Joe has given it, because this is far from the first time in their long lives that someone small-minded has tried to shame them. Nicky almost pities them all, that they’ll never experience love like he has.

The words are different each time, but the sentiment remains. It’s performative, meant to humble these emotionally stunted men, until it’s not--until it’s simply sweet words meant only for Nicky’s ears, despite the others surrounding them. Nicky can’t hold back the fond exasperation as he leans forward to meet Joe halfway for a kiss, and when they’re yanked apart, Joe holds his eye and winks. 

“You know,” Nicky says, craning his head back to look at the armed man who’s just been so thoroughly put in his place. “That was rude. We were in the middle of something.”

The man’s lip snarls in the second before he punches Nicky in the face.

“‘He’s all and more’,” the man says. “My ass.”

Nicky rubs at his sore jaw and, already bemoaning his throbbing headache, is on his knees before any of the armed men can react. He fists his zip-tied hands into the straps of the man’s bulletproof vest and heatbutts him hard between the eyes. 

“Enough of this,” Nicky spits, and things go quickly from there.

Joe kicks a heel into the shin of the guard on Nicky’s right--close enough that Nicky can hear the bone snap--at the same time he swings his fists back into the groin of one of the men behind him. He bends back gracefully, looping his bound hands around the next guard’s neck and hauling him bodily over Joe’s own shoulder so the man goes careening, face-first, into the opposite steel wall of the van with a sickeningly wet _crunch_. 

Nicky stops the pained screaming of the guard with the broken shin, by twisting up on his knees to snap the man’s neck. The final guard manages to stop cradling his balls long enough to fire a bullet into Nicky’s bicep before Joe rears up and twists the gun enough to get a shot off up under the man’s chin.

The silence afterward is welcome; Nicky’s head is pounding. The bullet has already pushed its way out of his arm, the hole it left knitting together neatly. 

He falls back to sit on the floor of the van and looks up at Joe, who’s sitting on the bench where the guards had been not 10 seconds ago.

“Thrilled you for millenia, have I?” he says idly, and Joe smiles. 

“Nothing but the truth, after all. Are you alright, my dear boyfriend?”

Nicky laughs, but it’s subdued. This scuffle was satisfying, but the reality of their situation weighs heavily, screaming in the echo of the silent van. 

Maybe it’s because the shock and confusion of Nile’s dreaming of Quynh, and the retelling of her ungodly fate--trapped and dying and dying and _dying_ , centuries of agony so haunting and incomprehensible and hopeless--is still fresh in his mind, but Nicky knows that Joe shares his unease.

“What do you think awaits us?” Joe asks, quiet. 

Nicky drops his forehead to Joe’s knee, sighing as familiar fingers thread through his hair. 

“I don’t know,” he admits.

Hired guards are one thing. As a general rule, they are arrogant behind their guns despite very little real training, and are therefore easily deposed. 

But they know neither who hired these men nor the purpose for which they’ve been captured. It’s daunting, the horrors that sprout in the minds of men who have the means to carry out those horrors. And whoever has their sight on Joe and Nicky, and Andy, Booker and Nile, clearly has the means.

Are they to be playthings? Tortured for the sake of torture, for the sake of gleeful, vindictive knowledge of what it’s like to kill and kill and kill another human that won’t stay dead? 

Or, possibly, someone has found out about them and means to use their particular qualities and skill sets for this person’s own bidding. If so, they will be sorely disappointed. Andy’s team fights only for what they think is right.

_Andy._

Nicky sighs again, shifting so his cheek rests against Joe’s thigh. 

“I don’t know,” he repeats softly, and curls a bound hand around Joe’s ankle. “But Andy and Booker will find us. Nile, too. They will come for us.”

The rest of the drive is quiet, both of them taking comfort in the other’s presence, the soft touches and shared space amongst the bodies littering the van. When the van slows and rolls to a stop on graveled ground, Nicky lifts his head. Joe’s fingers slip from his hair down to cup the back of his neck.

“‘I love you’ isn’t enough,” Nicky says in a low, private sort of tone. 

“It never is,” Joe replies, and again, they meet halfway for a kiss that reassures, reaffirms, _I’m here, my love. I’m here._

Whatever they are about to face, they will do it together. As always.

“Give ‘em hell, then?” 

“Nicolo, they don’t know the meaning of hell, yet.”

Nicky huffs a laugh against Joe’s mouth as voices approach the van. Then, when the door swings open and one of the dead guards topples out onto the ground, Nicky looks at the new, more heavily armed men outside with a bravado he only half-feels.

“I don’t suppose it would be possible to get these chains off of us?”

**Author's Note:**

> Who doesn’t like validation? I’d love to know what you thought! :)


End file.
